Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills
21 Feb 2008

By
Alix Spiegel

On October 3, 1955, the Mickey Mouse Club debuted on television. As we all now know, the show quickly became a cultural icon, one of those phenomena that helped define an era.

What is less remembered but equally, if not more, important, is that another transformative cultural event happened that day: The Mattel toy company began advertising a gun called the "Thunder Burp."

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Copyright 2008. Used with permission from NPR.